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You do something wrong, FATCA shoots your neighbor
- As Seen on Google

Google has grown from an idea generated by two students at Stanford University in 1998 to one of the world’s most well known and successful companies. Liane Hornsey, Director of People Operations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa says that the company would not have been able to innovate as quickly as it has, nor create the products it has in such a short space of time without highly valuing employee engagement ;
- The Wikileak video spread like wildfire across the internet and what next this week?
I'm not a wealthy man, but I'm rich in my convictions The West Needs a Good Dose of Perestroika -‎ Nothing Beats Helen Womack ‘s Analysis
During the Cold War, oppressed political dissidents around the world often had an easier time getting human-rights groups to advocate for their freedom. Today, however, it seems that dissidents often fail to garner the international spotlight they previously held. The reasons are manifold--ranging from the politicization of human rights to economic globalization to moral relativism.
Launching the Labour manifesto for the recent British election, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stood against the backdrop of a golden cornfield and promised a future fair for all. As I watched, I was struck by a powerful sense of deja vu. Where had I seen and heard all that before? Yes, of course, the Soviet Union circa 1980 — the old propaganda that spoke of bumper harvests and five-year plans fulfilled and overfulfilled.

A fresh page was turned in Prague on April 8 when Medvedev and the US President, Barack Obama, signed a treaty to reduce Russian and American stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons. Before that, Obama had cancelled a Bush-era plan to deploy ballistic missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, a prospect that had unsettled Moscow. The treaty was seen by some defence experts as a "one up" to Russia, but others saw wider benefits for the West in the politics of win-win and the new goodwill wafting from the Kremlin.

• Back in the CCCP - USSR ; Moscow Times [It was the greedy free market, supposedly, that created both the housing bubble and the housing bust and led, inevitably, to the “great recession.” Capitalism, according to most liberal pundits (and even Alan Greenspan in a bad mood), is an inherently risky and unstable system that requires government regulation to correct its flaws and moderate its excesses. Crony Capitalism Is NOT Capitalism ; Faking It Won't Make It ]
• · Nothing beats a quiet Sunday afternoon in the traditional book store. Last week I whiled away a couple of hours at two of my favorites – Daunts and Hatchards. Daunts is the best travel bookshop on earth, while Hatchards has five floors of imaginative, beautifully selected, beautifully laid-out books... Nothing Beats Book Stores ; George Clooney and Up in the Air have a lot to tell the employers about the downside of reducing face-to-face contact. Efficiency and savings are often illusory when it comes to computerizing and centralizing businesses. Sydney Expo and Up in the Air ; You thought only conservatives got mad about taxes? Tea partiers, eat your hearts out: A group of liberals got together Tuesday and proved that they, too, can have a tax rebellion. But theirs is a little bit different: They want to pay more taxes. ; Law students and the consumers of legal services like to think that professors are hired by law schools on the basis of pure intellectual ability and achievement. No doubt, individual intellectual ability and achievement play significant roles in law school faculty hiring. However, another important dynamic is overlooked, wealth
• · · Chris Masters in the Telegraph writes about gang violence in Melbourne and Sydney in a story headlined 'Why Sydney's hitmen are deadlier'. Under the usual pictures of the Ibrahims, Morans and the late Michael McGurk, he explains various motives behind the violence and deaths, including the practice of an underling serving jail time for a superior but not being properly rewarded after release. ; hitmen Underbelly 3 - The Golden Mile, set in Kings Cross, debuts this Sunday, Channel 9 8.30. It gets a rave review plus some great site Kings Cross footage on The Australian
• · · · THE Sydney underworld's war without end, the ongoing battle for temporary supremacy, has in recent years featured the most visible members, bikies. The clearest evidence that the jungle rule book of old has been torn up comes from the prisons. Chis Master; Hell on Wheels; Underbelly; I HAVE a particular affection for my Australian friends of Middle Eastern background - they seem imbued with a special generosity and. zest for life
• · · · · The reframe is powerful; arguing in favour of envy would appear as difficult as opposing hope, faith or charity The politics of envy ; Planning laws and lobbying NSW Inc
• · · · · · Founded on a growing evidence base that working is good for health Arbeighcht; It is a fitting coincidence that this new chapter in our tax history coincides with our centenary and in preparing ourselves for entering our new century of tax and superannuation administration! tax history ; Well, it's a good thing I'm rich and famous on google

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Wow! Gabbie, it's your 18th birthday. Even in the Central Europe, you are now regarded as an adult. It is official a bohemian girl star is now a bohemian woman star













- Memories of memories of a 6 foot woman at 18 Footer

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Happy Mothers Day to Dial, June and all the wonderful women in this amazing world

Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world. Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. Global Rich List

A Boy with Double Dragon Tattoo is now on the Global list . A list, very few Czechs make it Bohemian Media Dragon
or Australians ( Dangerous Journeys)

Creating a healthy happy world John Hatton Empowering Communities - Matters of Amazing Grace
Having looked at history and done theory on happiness in recent blogs, here’s a top 10 from Dr Mike Pratt to pin to your wall Happiness – 10 Key Things We Know

Creating a healthy happy world is a worthy pursuit which we all have a stake in. It’s something academic colleague Dr. Mike Pratt has been working on to evolve Peak Performance theory. This week I have three posts based on Mike’s recent work, and for starters here’s some historical ground from the deep delvers:
BC 384-322: Greek Aristotle strikes it long and deep: Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence
• BC 341-270: Greek Epicurus hits the pleasure button (Epicureanism), and gets tagged as a supporter of hedonism. To his credit, he said you have to draw the line somewhere.
• On sweeping levels, Buddhism and Islam develop powerful paths to happiness.
• 13th century, the Italian Roman Catholic priest Thomas Aquinas weighs in with: “Every man necessarily desires happiness.”
• 1711-1776: the Scot David Hume high five’s Aristotle’s view.
• 1776: The American Declaration of Independence includes the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right.
• 1748 – 1832: Englishman Jeremy Bentham defines happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain. An advocate of utilitarianism, he describes natural law and natural rights as “nonsense upon stilts.”
• 1806 – 1873: John Stuart Mill works up utilitarianism with Jeremy, and focuses on actions that generate pleasure. He says OK to different types of pleasure, and pumps ‘higher pleasure’.
• 1818 – 1883: Karl Marx sees happiness as the ultimate destination, achieved through crashing the lead vehicle.
• 1844 – 1900: Friedrich Nietzsche says happiness is something for British Shopkeepers. Ronnie Barker’s sitcom alter-ego, the grocer Arkwright, to double negative, wouldn’t disagree.
• 1879 – 1955: Albert Einstein compares moral aims like well-being and happiness to the ambitions of a pig.
• 2000 – 2010: Happiness gets pondered, indexed, studied, measured, blogged and tweeted about.

• Stand by for more about his happiness… [ The Inquisition: the Wood Royal Commission ; FORMER independent MP John Hatton has called on the Southern Highlands to be awake to political corruption and incompetence. Mr Hatton, who in 1994 led the push for the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption, which will see him played by John Waters in the latest Underbelly series. Corruption buster, John Hatton, to give talk on empowering communities ; The average person in the community has every right to feel powerless; Not one to mince words, former Independent MP John Hatton had a public meeting of close to 150 people taking notice Not one to mince words, former Independent MP John Hatton had a public meeting of close to 150 people taking notice ; Underbelly; Underbelly ]
• · It's wonderful to unexpectedly stumble upon a kindred spirit – or at least a person who holds a worldview eerily similar to your own. This happened recently when I came across the work and writings of Gunter Pauli, who is about to release the English language version of his book, The Blue Economy ; 15 April 2010 marked the 6-year anniversary of TaxProf Blog
• · · Sarah Palin's contract discovered by two students to speak at Stanislaus college includes private jet and expensive hotels…MUST BE a r larger for West Coast Events; or, a Hawker 800 or larger for East Coast Events and both are subject to the Speaker's approval Lear 60 ; NYU Hosts Reading Today of Dan Shaviro's Getting It Following up on my prior post, the NYU Graduate Tax Program is hosting a reading and discussion today of the new novel by Tax Prof Daniel N. Shaviro (NYU), Getting It (iUniverse, 2010): Bill Doberman is a liar. He's also a conniver, a phony, a hypocrite, and a cad -- and those are his good points... Evelyn Waugh meets John Grisham. Hilarious and gripping ; The tax bar is commonly referred to as a "special priesthood," and it is only slightly more tolerant than the Catholic Church in ordaining women tax priests. -- Paul L. Caron
Special priesthood
• · · · The 3 most critical skills for managing a remote team, Wayne Turmel, bnet.com, 1 March 2010. The author suggests that managers of 21st-century teams need the ability to: create human connections quickly, know what tools to use when - and how to use them, and create loyalty; A blog launched today provides the public with an opportunity to participate in the development of the Rudd Government's Standard Business Reporting (SBR) program...the blog provides a online forum for businesses, reporting professionals, software developers and the broader public to discuss SBR issues Lindsay Tanner ; Standard Business Reporting Open for Comment ; The new social media policy recognises the widespread influence that blogs and wikis have within the community, and that of course includes our staff whom we want be alert to the potential risks of identity fraud and other threats. DIAC Use of the web New social media policy to guide staff online activities; It's all the rage for ministries and agencies to have a Facebook or even MySpace page these days. Governments are going where their citizens are. So why bother having a web site at all? Will Facebook profiles replace govt web sites?,
• · · · · Arkadi Kuhlmann, Ivey Business Journal, March-April 2010. Arkadi Kuhlmann, Chairman and CEO of ING Direct USA (America's largest direct bank), describes the steps that he took, and that other leaders can take, to build a distinctive and dynamic culture Culture driven leadership ; Over the last eighteen months of economic turmoil, leaders, and their ethics, morals and judgement, have been scrutinised and questioned. Leadership and its role in business, politics and wider society has been the subject of great debate. Leadership challenges ; In the new movie Date Night, Steve Carell plays tax lawyer Phil Foster, who is married to Claire Tina Fey
CODA: The ninth edition of "As Certain as Death -- Quotations About Taxes," the collection that I have assembled and published in Tax Notes over the last 16 years. It contains 1,577 quotations, a 426 percent increase over the 300 quotations that made up the first edition in 1994....
No matter how cynical you get, you can never keep up. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can depend upon the support of Paul …
[T]axation, in reality, is life. If you know the position a person takes on taxes, you can tell their whole philosophy. The tax code, once you get to know it, embodies all the essence of life: greed, politics, power, goodness, charity.
A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.
As Certain As Death -- Quotations About Taxes

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Winston Churchill once said, The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Bohemian Elizabeth and Media Dragon go a long long way back to 1980s Wild wild Polish Polish at Chrsitophers pad at Bondi ...
Elizabeth Wojciak - Entwined - 09 April - 06 May 2010. Olga and her Harrison Galleries is in Paddington, the art district of Sydney. The gallery was established in 2000 and has quickly developed into a dynamic and reputable commercial contemporary art gallery. Elizabeth at 123 at Adelaide




Entwined: Get Drawing Versatility is key for Polish eyes ELIZABETH WOJCIAK: Dreams & Hunger: A Manifesto
Elizabeth was born in Poland, and after extensive travelling moved to Australia in the early 1980s, eventually settling in Adelaide. She studied at the Adelaide Centre for the Arts and graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts and Applied Design in 2004, majoring in painting and receiving an Outstanding Academic Achievement Award. Since her studies, Elizabeth has received several awards including the 2004 MinterEllison Lawyers Rising Star Award and the Art Stretchers Award for Highest Achievement in Painting in 2005.

Elizabeth (Polish friends sometimes refer to Elizabeth fondly as Ela)has also been selected to exhibit in the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, represented ACArt Adelaide at PICA in Perth, WA, and is included in several national and international private collections. Her first solo exhibition in 2008, Recent Works, demonstrated Elizabeth’s expressive and
intuitive approach to painting.

• Moving in Artistic circles - Polished Ideas in Images [In these recent works Elizabeth continues to explore her interest and fascination with the human form. While Elizabeth principal concerns are with the formal qualities of drawing and painting, these figure compositions in landscape and interior situations invite the viewer to construct their own narratives ; Even Google who gives Media Dragon ranking of 5 is artistic Google gets Aussie/Polish/Bohemian kids doodling]



• · "Our Culture is obsessed with real events because we experience hardly any." — David Shields Reality Hunger: A Manifesto; Discover the Bohemian Art and you fall in love - Why preserve an artist’s palette? Look for artists at their easels around Media Dragon
• · · Learning about life and love A marriage of Poetry and Painting; Few of us live so strenuously as never to feel a sense of nostalgia for that Saturnian reign to which Virgil and Claude can waft us
• · · · The starving-artist lifestyle may be colorful and appealing for a while, but it gets old fast if you are bunking on a friend’s sofa, living under the same roof you did in junior high and lying awake at night wondering how you are going to repay your staggering five-figure student loan. If nothing changes, the next generation of journalists will give up and move on to entirely different pursuits. And you can’t blame them What do journalists and starving artists have in common?; The well-used phrase "don't judge a book by its cover" was never more apropos than when I journeyed northwest to join The Wild Party, the musical presented by Ohlook Performing Arts Center in Grapevine. Interpretations of PPWP
• · · · · More blasts from the past: Teenage bouncer John Ibrahim (Firass Dirani) saves Kings Cross bouncer 'Hammer' (Salvatore Coco) from being clobbered by drunks, earning him a chance meeting with Kings Cross Boss George Freeman (Peter O'Brien), whose mentor-like advice prompts John to take life changing matters into his own hands. Country girl Kim Hollingsworth (Emma Booth) takes her first steps into prostitution as a result of her abusive boyfriend Trent (Mark Furze) stealing her money. With Politician John Hatton (John Waters) pushing for a Royal Commission, Detective Inspector Dennis Kelly warns Detective Sergeants Jim Egan (Daniel Roberts) and Trevor Haken to clean-up their act, but instead, Jim and Trevor devise a plan to swindle $200,000 from the Federal Police, with the assistance of Drug King Bill Bayeh (Hazem Shammas) and his crew. Surviving a brutal stabbing, John Ibrahim strikes up a deal with a nightclub owner to buy a percentage of the Tunnel Cabaret and finally gets his foot in the door as an entrepreneur.
Underbelly: The Golden Mile; The cops and their mates got away with murder. The Stewart inquiry which I thing was part of a National Crime Authority inquiry into bent NSW cops and another royal commission into police couldn't get them. I reckon when the Wood Royal Commission which reluctantly was set up by the NSW government in late 1994 a few months before an election, thanks to the brave efforts of 4 independent NSW MPs, in particular John Hatton, as after a couple of bi-elections the independents had the balance of power, Justice Wood and his team probably watched the tapes and made a pledge to make sure the bent cops and their criminal mates weren't going to get away with it this time. Like Al Capone they couldn't get Rogerson on his corrupt activites. He got 3 years in 1992, for perverting the course of justice in relation to $110,000 deposited by him in bank accounts under a false name.; NSW political perspective Matilda of Hung Parliament

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Happy St Patrick and St Jozef Day to Media Dragons everywhere this week

W e live on the thin ice of unexplained phenomena.
-Patricia Highsmith, notebook entry, October 14, 1944

H umor is a far more complex process than primeval pleasures like sex or food, but just as much tied to the inner complexity of the brain. The Tax office does have a sense of humour. It cites Wikipedia as its source for a definition of private equity was about the only amusing aspect for most international investors and tax lawyers as they digested the ATO s draft rulings arising from the TPG Myer case. Media Dragon and Google are the two internet giants whose informal corporate motto is - don't be evil
After all, the dissemination of good ideas and their victory over bad ideas are forms of technological progress.



Media Dragons are huge working horse failures ;-) Failure is a teacher
Run a web search on some phrases built around failure, and you’ll come up with quite a few reflecting a very true statement, “Failure is a teacher.”

Our histories and leadership legends all benefit from the context of understanding the final outcome of the story, but the telling of the story doesn’t adequately capture the powerful emotional forces that occur at the moment of failure. Certainly, the stories are right and the lessons instructional. They inspire us to persevere, but the failure-leading to-success legends don’t guide us how to respond and cope in the moment

• The Bohemian Art of Failure [Simon Sharwood flags the following technologies as ones to watch: cloud computing, new Microsoft upgrades, virtualisation, biometric authentication, next-generation firewalls, employee-owned IT, loyalty schemes, solid state disks, smart grids and hybrid servers Top 10 business technology trends for 2010 ; Contrary to popular myth, “being a visionary” is neither a prerequisite for leading, nor is it bestowed upon the chosen few as they ascend to their lofty perches above us ]
• · Tens of thousands of years of human mating norms are evaporating as Cro-Magnon males drag women into their caves, and the. women love every minute of it ; Tucker for Mafia and Triads
• · · Is media multitasking driven by a desire for new information or a wish to avoid hard thinking? The easy option dressed up like something hard ; The human brain, for all its power, is quite suspicious of difficulty. Effective marketers, politicians, and sales people all know to keep it simple KISS
• · · · “When you say banker, a lot of people think Jewish.” So what if they do? What if people are just a little prejudiced about Jewish bankers?... Bankers ; Casanova made prodigious use of English frock coats, the “little preventive bag invented by the English to save the fair sex from anxiety”... Librarians - it's easier to get forgiveness than permission
• · · · · Threatsaurus: the a-z of computer and data security threats: Whether you're an IT professional, use a computer at work, or just browse the internet, this book is for you. We tell you the facts about the threats to your computers and to your data in simple, easy-to-understand language. Sophos Group; Successful innovation requires as much attention to the soft side of business - people and their knowledge, skills and motivations - as it does to hard financial objectives or strategic reasons. The active management of innovation needs goals, structure, fair process, a diverse skill base and focused support. Gaming innovation

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London is Calling
A snippet from Basement Alex is heading to UK in March 2010 AD for 6 months

Alex aka Sasha aka Roxie Ray has come a long way in a short time and now. heading for UK tour The sassy Sydney native has emerged as one of the soul revivals brightest stars. In a short space of time, she has appeared on several international record releases incl Lack of Afro, Milano Jazz Dance Combo and others and has performed continuously, drawing from her passion for the sounds and feeling of the jazz divas of the last 50 years Roxies voice and presence is unique, striking and emotive. Its a full-on, straight-up, knock-out soul-sister seduction.

http://events.liveguide.com.au/655165_thumbnail_280_The_Liberators_Michelle_Martinez_and_Roxie_Ray_DJ_Russ_Dewbury_plus_special_guest_Toon_Eastside.v1.jpg

Music to our ears



Being Digital and Young Ideas and Sounds
Last week, along with Tom Eslinger, our Worldwide Creative Head of Digital, Kevin Roberts was at Lancaster University talking to HighWire students about our digital world. Digital technology means there are no barriers of scale or production to distributing great ideas and true creative people should welcome learning about this.

We talked about a lot but the key thing on my mind was that digitization, and the power of the Internet and the mobile, should be the most liberating forces ever for creativity. We believe at Saatchi & Saatchi in the unreasonable power of creativity and nothing can set this free more than being digital.

• Being Digital [Binge drinking is a problem which can have devastating results, and it seems to take particular hold in cold dark climates ; This paper contends that the hype surrounding the steep rise of social media networking website use has tended to mask the reality of a corresponding growth in online fraud and crime. New Web 2.0 technologies may enable inventive interactivity online, but they also foster innovative ways for those intent on nefarious means to achieve their ends. Cyber Crime 2.0 versus the Twittering classes ]
• · After a review demonstrated concerns about leadership and communication skills among staff at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, action was deemed necessary. ASIC; TONY Abbott is a latter-day Muhammad Ali dancing around Kevin Rudd's Joe Frazier. He messes with Rudd's mind, taunting him on climate change, industrial relations and health.
Political orthodoxy would suggest that raising the salience of these policy areas -- in all of which Labor leads the Coalition in public perceptions -- should assist the government.
• · · Sadly, one fifth of the workforce keep their Blackberries on at all times, night, day, weekend and wedding anniversary. I’m all for sight, sound and motion, and the enhancement of the screen to become a force for good in the world, but not at the expense of the world itself... Who Needs Information? ; Urban sprawl has nothing on the Internet, in terms of breadth, depth, hidden gems – and frequently, confusion. Some smart people at the BBC have shown the Internet visually, giving an intuitive sense of the big picture… Where In The Web?
• · · · New York magazine had an interesting recent feature, 50 Steps to Simple Happiness. We each develop our own strategies for preventing and relieving stress and promoting joy and contentment in our lives. The key for me is the idea of work / life integration Happiness ; Debate on the upside and downside of the Internet continues to rage, and won’t be settled any time soon. I’m an upsider, and take the view that powering forward imperfectly beats staying still or rolling back perfectly. The liberating and involving nature of the Internet cuts creativity loose on such a fantastic scale, that I think we’ll have the capability to fix the flaws as we go. Good News Travels Faster
• · · · · When Geoffrey Canada's extraordinary and uplifting 'Harlem Miracle' one day makes it on to film, it might be tough to sell as a true story. But as an inspirational teacher movie, it will blow you away. Up where they belong; Google keeps a record of everything: Quincy Tang's (Financial Investigator at Australian Crime Commission) professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world's largest business Quincy Tang - Financial Investigator at Australian Crime Commission

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Just when we thought it was safe to go back to the future we all have to follow our relative Hambrich (sik sic) who identified three kinds of people: those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; and those who wonder what happened.

Malchkeon makes things happen... Happy Birthday and many 18footer-moments wherever you go ;-0

Here we go again … our latest list of the 100 best websites sees short attention spans, the rise of Twitter, more browser wars and celebrity gossip sites setting the news agenda. Slovak born veteran media dragon, Andy Warhol, talked of a time when everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. With hindsight, however, he might have wanted to revise that down to about five minutes. On today's web, phrases such as "here today, gone tomorrow" seem to involve ridiculously long timescales. People who moaned that blogging represented a move to shorter attention spans – 250-to-350-word posts rather than 1,000-word stories – have now seen blog posts start to look big and, frankly, old-fashioned. Today's trendsetters are using "microblogging" sites such as Tumblr, Posterous and Soup.io, which are taking the opportunity for creative "borrowing" to new heights Best of Best Media Dragons


Endless Love of a true visionaries Love and Science are In the Air
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Romance and science aren’t the most traditional bedfellows – perhaps with the exception of that ultimate first date make-or-break, ‘chemistry’.

However a recent LA Times article revealed that increasingly scientists are finding the chemistry concept isn’t just a metaphor for the sparks that fly (or fizzle) when two people meet. Love and attraction causes real changes in the brain, releasing high levels of the chemical dopamine which provides that first buzz, and then later bonding hormones like vasopressin and oxytocin. And researchers are using MRI machines to observe and measure these effects, with some surprising results.

• Radical Attraction [Life entails more than sitting in a sealed-off room wrapped up in cotton-wool. Mark their words: the battle begins - Maurice Newman's address to ABC staff Avoiding risk or avoiding life? ; The demands of blogging have pushed many to abandon the form for faster, simpler word bursts on Twitter or Facebook. Today, there is increasing evidence that the art of blog writing is losing ground to even faster forms of communication, from 140-character Twitter blasts to one-sentence status updates on Facebook and MySpace. Nielsen Media Research estimates that of the 126 million blogs counted by its crawlers, the vast majority are rarely – if ever – updated. Has blogging peaked? ]
• · DEPRESSION, WAR, AND COLD WAR Challenging the Myths of Conflict and Prosperity ; Communist China now has more billionaires than any other country besides the United States, according to Forbes magazine. There are a total of 64 people in that bracket in mainland China, the magazine says in its annual list of the world's richest people Forbes ; BBC on Rich ; Namesake; Guardian
• · · A Gold Coast businessman found guilty after a major tax evasion investigation which is also looking into Crocodile Dondee star Paul Hogan's affairs blogged on Google’s networking site Buzz about beating the authorities in the middle of his Supreme Court fraud trial, it can be revealed. Adam Hargraves and business partner Daniel Stoten, both 38, were found guilty this week of conspiring to cause a loss to a commonwealth entity and remanded in custody for sentencing Blog boasts in fraud trial- Courier Mail, 11/03/2010, ; "We won't lie about our marriage on our tax forms, either, filing as the married people we are," Marla Stevens wrote on a blog in September 2005. "We've racked up about a million dollars in potential criminal fines and about a hundred years in potential prison time under the old sentencing guidelines between us - so far. Marla Stevens once bragged about how she and her spouse, Phyllis, violated federal tax laws
• · · · A new transparency and accountability seal is being developed by Washington News Council, a non-profit forum New transparency 'seal' initiative for online journalists; The attention economy has gotten plenty of, ahem, attention. Competition for limited attention spans has led many companies to get louder, either literally, or figuratively via social media, deep discounts or misguided attempts at technological differentiation. No doubt, the attention arms race has escalated - but this has been to little avail as customers have found ways to tune it out. The Rise of the Inattention Economy
• · · · · Now, this may come as a bit of a shock but over the next couple of months this blog is going to contain, in the words of a 1980s comedian, "a little bit of politics". "We'll still be knocking on doors," one senior party official told me, "it's just that we'll be organising the knocking-on-doors via Facebook". I'm taking up a temporary position as the BBC's digital election correspondent, with the job of examining how politicians and voters are using new technology in the run-up to the general election. I will still keep an eye on the rest of the technology landscape, but the blog will gradually become infused with the political scene. We'll still be knocking on doors ; Why all the fuss about Facebook?; The Hurt Locker upsets Avatar Did Blog Buzz for “Hurt Locker” Predict Its Oscar Win?

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Best wishes to Bawa and everybody who shares this special day with him. After dining at Hungry Czech then singing "Happy Birthday" and cutting of the cake amazing stories from Kenya and Panjab came out

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Some bad news is not new; it's made worse by the fact that it's caught in a long-term trend that shows no sign of reversal ... Dragon’s writing on the wall tend to attract trouble...



Our Bronte neighbour wrote in mid September a letter to Australian regulators which detailed his concerns about a fund manager in Australia known as the Astarra Strategic Fund – formerly known as Absolute Alpha.
This letter resulted in regulatory action against a cluster of related funds (almost twenty), however my letter was almost entirely about only one fund in the group. I did not make any major suggestions in the letter about other funds in the Astarra complex. My involvement was detailed today in the Sydney Morning Herald (see stories here, here and here, with the first story on the front page below the fold). There was no genius in my letter – everything could be found (fairly easily) on the internet – and the original tip-off came from a reader of my blog – who noticed links with a story I wrote up in March 2009


Fear 'We did it ourselves!
As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honour and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!
--Lao-Tsu

An obsessive routine in carrying out the details begets conformity and complacency, which in turn dulls everyone's mind. That is why even as they pay attention to details, they continually encourage people to challenge the process. They implicitly understand the sentiment of CEO-leaders like Quad/Graphic's Harry Quadracchi, Oticon's Lars Kolind and the late Bill McGowan of MCI, who all independently asserted that the job of a leader is not to be the chief organizer, but the chief dis-organizer.

• chief dis-organizer Leaders of capital and social funds [THE corporate regulator has expressed no concerns about two men owning Australian financial services companies, despite questions about the men's role in a British broker involved in a penny stock scandal.
BusinessDay revealed last week that Jeffrey Revell-Reade, based in Austria, and James Sutherland, based in Hong Kong, owned Australian companies that received three financial services licences from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. ;
The Association of Independently Owned Financial Planners (AIOFP) has received unconfirmed reports that $85 million of the missing $118 million of assets within the Astarra Strategic Fund (ASF) are safe AIOFP finds $85m of Astarra Strategic assets ; Google i ; Google ii ]
• · The ever expanding volume of information we face on a daily basis - and the wide range of issues in relation to the concept of information overload, ranging from concerns about information fatigue, information interruption, information access and information transparency that require attention to the costs and benefits of faster and more voluminous flows of data, knowledge and decision management Overloaded ; The establishment of the Senior Executive Service (SES) in 1984 sought to create a Service-wide strategic leadership in ideas, management, and ethics in accordance with the Westminster principles and conventions of public administration as they operate in the Australian model of government. The 25th anniversary of the creation of the SES provides an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements made during this time, and to focus on the challenges ahead The Senior Executive Service 25th Anniversary,
• · · Data losses to incur fines of up to £500,000, BBC, 12 January 2010. The UK Information Commissioner's Office will be able to issue fines of up to £500,000 for serious data security breaches. The new rule is expected to come into force in the UK on 6 April 2010. The size of the fine will be determined after an investigation to assess the gravity of the breach. Other factors will include the size and finances of the organisation at fault. Individual cases will also be assessed on whether the breach was accidental or deliberate and how much distress the leak of information caused ; Reinventing management
• · · · The art of management ; The heroic leader, media dragon, the charismatic, goal-scoring superstar who doesn't mind carrying the team on his back, is out. Enter the post-heroic leader, the quieter, engaging team player who brings every player into the decision-making process. In fact, today's complex business environment requires a leader who combines the best of both styles Is heroic leadership all bad?,
• · · · · Australia's first taxes were levied to meet the challenges of those early days. They may also have been relatively efficient, equitable and simple, particularly since most of the revenue for the gaol came from import duties on alcohol – 'the more the citizens drank, the more money there was to control them' If we were able to ask Governor Hunter of the new colony of New South Wales why he introduced the very first taxes in Australia – taxes applying to imports – I suspect his answer would be, simply, that the colony had to finance the building of a new gaol because the old one had 'inexplicably' burnt down, private subscriptions had proved insufficient and Britain had refused further subsidies. Ken Henry the VIII ; Individual income tax returns [electronic resource] : necessary or not? : Toni Balik Australia : CPA Australia, 1998 TAX OFFICE IS NOW ON MEDIA DRAGON, FACEBOOK, TWITTER The Tax Office has advised that it is now on social networking site Twitter providing "tweets" (much in the style of an SMS message - 140 characters or less) on the latest updates on new measures, changes to legislation and reminders of upcoming due dates. The ATO says those keen to take a look without signing up to Twitter can go to http://www.twitter.com/ato_gov_au [http://www.twitter.com/ato_gov_au http://www.twitter.com/ato_gov_au
• · · · · · Nicknamed the “Pirate of Prague” for his bargain-basement purchase of post-Soviet privatization vouchers in his native Czechoslovakia, Kozeny, 46, got in trouble with U.S. authorities when he tried to pull off a similar maneuver in the Caspian Sea nation of Azerbaijan in the late 1990s. Bohemian Pirate; As researcher Alan Block described the metastatic growth of the tax-haven phenomenon in his groundbreaking work, Masters of Paradise: Organized Crime and the Internal Revenue Service in the Bahamas, "professional criminals were those who took it upon themselves to organize crime. Their true work was the process of organizing crime itself."GAO reports that CSC has 21 subsidiaries "in jurisdictions listed as tax havens" by the federal government. Some of the firm's global operations are located in tech manufacturing powerhouses such as Bermuda (1); British Virgin Islands (4); Costa Rica (1); Hong Kong (5); Ireland (2); Luxembourg (2); Macao (1); Singapore (4); Switzerland (1). Masters of Paradise; Alexander Zvygintsev, Russia's Deputy Prosecutor-General, said Britain and Israel harboured more Russian criminals than any other countries. He told the newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta: "It is no coincidence the capital of [Britain] is often called 'Londongrad'. It seems that London, as a major financial centre, is turning into a giant laundrette for laundering criminally sourced funds. Britain called crooks' haven
Scots like Jock agree

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Virginia’s Visit from Bristol what an earthy title for a brilliant novel ...

Whatever you do avoid a movie named Being in Heaven as it felt as being in Hell when Media Dragon watched it.

But watch and enjoy Crazy heart as we live on the thin ice of unexplained phenomena The whole world's crazy but me and thee

Second generation Hollywood, his dad Lloyd Bridges was a major heart-throb in the 60s, Jeff Bridges admits having famous parents made it easier for him to be successful in Hollywood. A hokey story about a washed-up country singer is rescued by a wonderful performance by Jeff Bridges who shows off his musical as well as his acting talent in Crazy Heart. ; Based on a 1987 novel of the same name by Thomas Cobb, this film is a quality romantic drama that carries considerable punch. Jeff Bridges adds an expertly developed and totally credible character to the gallery of movie drunks. Jeff Bridges, nominated for an Oscar for Crazy Heart, believes the secret to success lies in a four-letter word: Love!


The Way of All Debt Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Legendary novelist, poet, and essayist Margaret Atwood delivers a surprising look at the topic of debt. In her wide-ranging, entertaining, and imaginative approach to the subject, Atwood proposes that debt is like air - something we take for granted until things go wrong. And then, while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it.

Payback is not about practical debt management or high finance. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. Margaret Atwood writes “These are not lectures about how to get out of debt; rather, they’re about the debtor/creditor twinship in the broadest sense – from human sacrifice to pawnshops to revenge. In this light, what we owe and how we pay is a feature of all human societies, and profoundly shapes our shared values and our cultures.”

• Payback is not about practical debt management or high finance [ BBC; Massey filled with dangerous ideas ]
• · What I’ve learned from 30 years of teaching The Merchant of Venice - Paula Marantz Cohen has been teaching literature for 30 years, and “the longer I teach, the more I enjoy teaching Shakespeare. As I grow older and wearier, his plays seem to deliver greater matter and art in a more condensed and lively way than any other text I could choose. To be clichéd about it: Shakespeare offers more bang for the buck.” If we want a happy ending, at some point with Shakespeare we must draw a line and close our eyes to the injustice an ending may entail Consider Shylock, My Students, and Me - By Paula Marantz Cohen; while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it ; debt as an ancient and central motif in religion ; Putting the U.S. Debt Problem in Perspective - Due to massive increases in federal spending, the economic future of the United States looks gloomy. The interest cost to "carry" the U.S. public debt was $383 billion in Fiscal Year 2009 and is estimated to exceed $700 billion by 2019. Taxes can be increased only so much before taxpayers rebel by working less or voting incumbent politicians out of office. Another alternative--monetary expansion--also has limited potential for paying down the debt: it leads to rising prices and, eventually, rising interest rates, which would make it harder to sell U.S. debt abroad Could the U.S. Default on its Debt?
• · · Seeking How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous, by Emily Yoffe Writing on the walls of filthy liars; Actually all our electronic communication devices—e-mail, Facebook feeds, texts, Twitter—are feeding the same drive as our searches. Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting...If humans are seeking machines, we've now created the perfect machines to allow us to seek endlessly.
You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Social bohemian media dragon bandwagon
• · · · JD Salinger's reclusiveness was as famous as his slim output of books. The life of JD Salinger, which has just ended, is one of the strangest and saddest stories in recent literary history A lifetime of celebrity for J.D. Salinger from just one Cold River ; Like many of my fellow pilgrims, I hit adolescence only to discover my autobiography had already been written; plagiarized, in fact, by a man named J.D. Salinger who, in appropriating to himself my inner mass of pain and confusion, had given me the unlikely name of "Holden Caulfield." (You think you had it bad: I come from the High Tatra Mountains, didn't make it through prep school, believe the world divides into two kinds of people, phonies and, well, me.)
• · · · · I’ve been spending some time recently on planet Janacek. You could call planet Janacek the earth inside this earth – the molten planet of passion below the solid, congealed crust. You don’t visit the territory carved out by the Czech composer Leos Janacek without risk; but the risk is not so much to your physical safety as to your emotional comfort. Janacek, as much as the late JD Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, has no time for phoneys or phoneyness Love of the world
; Seldom has a man who wrote so few words attracted so many as J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author who died on Thursday at his remote home in Cornish, New Hampshire, at the age of 91 Google on Loneliness

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John Brockman’s Edge question for 2010 asks over a hundred intellectuals, “Is the Internet changing the way you think?” the go-to site for the world’s procrastinating intellectuals


Timothy Garton Ash Cut This Story!
Newspaper articles are too long, encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your grasp of the news

George Orwell’s diaries attest to his deep dread of rats. Perhaps not the only thing he shares with characters in Nineteen Eighty-Four... All day clearing out strawberries, which have not been touched since last year. It seems one plant will put out anything up to 12 or 15 runners ...
Promote a conspiracy theory, and your phones will be bugged, your office burgled (but not robbed), your hard drives fragment, and your emails vanish Or so you’ll think. This season's fashion in conspiracy theories—for those out of the loop of enlightenment—concerns health. The Web sites, marginal cable shows and radio phone-ins are full of tales about how Big Pharma and Bad Government are deliberately spreading diseases or manufacturing scares in order to sell us expensive drugs, gull us into dangerous vaccinations or just simply to create an atmosphere of panic which will allow "them" to take over.

• George Orwell’s diaries
[During the Cold War, when Pete Seeger coaxed classrooms full of kids to join him in folk songs, no one saw America’s “singing left” as much of a political threat.
The law of unintended consequences gave a quirky twist to the relation between the Old and New Left and, in the process, lent peculiar accents to America’s musical and political culture that we can’t seem to get rid of even today. The folk revival—a fad sandwiched between the beatniks and the hippies—may have been brief, but it was also the baby boomers’ coming of age, and its echoes have been lasting. Bruce Springsteen made a splash in 2006 with his Seeger Sessions. Ry Cooder paid homage to Woody Guthrie in the 2007 release My Name Is Buddy. Sheryl Crow told Billboard magazine that her song, “Shine Over Babylon,” is “very environmentally conscious, in the tradition of Bob Dylan. Where Have All the Lefties Gone?
; Sovietology was a powerful force in Cold War history, giving the West a better understanding of its adversary. Today, we need a jihadology
In 1945, the United States faced a dire threat. The rising power of the Soviet Union and the spread of communism in Eastern Europe -- and, soon enough, worldwide -- represented a new enemy that imperiled postwar hopes for a peaceful and prosperous world. The United States was poorly equipped to comprehend, let alone respond to, this emerging global danger. The federal government had few experts who spoke Russian or had a deep knowledge of Russian history and culture; universities were barely better off. The field of Soviet studies emerged as a response and became the catalyst for a network of area studies programs that would soon follow.
Sovietology was a powerful force in Cold War history ]
• · Formulaic book-beat stories: how Writer A struggled and made it big, how Writer B’s novel is marketed, or Writer C’s huge advance. Bob Thompson tries to avoid the formulas... The opening piece, “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” begins with a description of the San Bernardino Valley, east of Los Angeles, and of “the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves.” Three pages later, with an October Santa Ana bearing witness, a dentist’s wife named Lucille Miller watches her husband burn to death in the family Volkswagen. By the time I emerged from this sinister dreamscape I had overshot my bus stop by a mile.; The French Resistance continues to excite the imagination because of its sheer drama and mystery – embodied perfectly in the story of Jean Moulin... As we approach the 70th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle's historic broadcast from London on 18 June 1940 that inaugurated the French Resistance, interest in the story remains undiminished. It is, though, increasingly difficult for the French to fit the Resistance into their collective memory of this difficult period. There is a prevalent British misconception that the French exaggerate their glorious Resistance exploits-everyone claiming a "resister" in the family-in order to gloss over the darker aspects of the Occupation. In truth, those darker aspects are as present in public discussion today as the Resistance. Every school in Paris has a plaque reminding people of the role played by the Vichy state in the deportation of the Jews. The Resistance continues to excite the imagination because of its sheer drama and mystery
• · · Timothy Garton Ash’s technique lies in a mixture of reportage and judgment, circling and deepening, as the one reinforces the other.
Promote a conspiracy theory, and your phones will be bugged, your office burgled (but not robbed), your hard drives fragment, and your emails vanish. Or so you’ll think. The problem of evil and the origins of the devil, who has inspired Goethe, Heine, W. S. Gilbert, Paul Valéry, Berlioz, Gounod, Turgenev and Randy Newman, to name a few Strange footnote ; Upper mismanagement. Why can’t we make things anymore in America? Two words, says Noam Scheiber: business school
• · · · As tattoos go mainstream, it becomes hard for criminals to signal their devotion to crime. They look more and more like ordinary citizens.. It is a truth universally acknowledged that messing with a guy who has facial tattoos is a really bad idea. Getting dirty words tattooed on your eyelids—a popular choice, judging from the mug shots available online—is a serious commitment. It is, as social scientists say, a “signal that is costly to fake.” The bearer of a facial tattoo announces to the world: I expect to be in prison for most of my life, or to hang out with people who consider prison experience a character reference.; The moral triumphs and failures of leaders carry a greater weight and volume than those of non-leaders. In leadership we see morality and immorality magnified. Leaders are human. That is their strength and their weakness. As humans, they are unpredictable creatures, capable of extraordinary kindness and cruelty
• · · · · Toys for Boys; Bankers

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Happy Fourth St Valentine Malchkeoun ;-)

Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
-St Francis of Assisi.

Great teachers, Like Mrs Chamilova or Dr Cope or James Cumes, can’t be identified in any reliable, objective way. They have a gift: some mystical quality we revere but can’t replicate.
For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication. But for more than a decade, one organization has been tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and looking at why some teachers can move them three grade levels ahead in a year and others can’t. Bohemian Alchemy


Media Dragons: You know people have tried to put us off as being crazy Literary magazines were once launching pads for great
Literary magazines were once launching pads for great writers and big ideas. Is it time to write them off? VQR editor Ted Genoways wonders...

It is impossible to write about such a book as Best European Fiction 2010 without also writing about America's disinterest in such a book. American literary culture is insular? Oh, yeah? Are Czechs all that taken by fiction coming out of Denmark? Do Latvians groove on Philippine poetry?
With Eric Rohmer, as with Mozart, Austen, James, and Proust, art was not just about life. It was about discovery and design and reasoning with chaos. TO those of us who have seen all of Eric Rohmer’s films it is impossible not to remember when, where, with whom we saw each one. I even remember the second and third time I saw his films. “My Night at Maud’s,” “Claire’s Knee,” “Chloe in the Afternoon” are grafted onto my life. Something happened between me and these films at the Thalia, at the Brattle, at the old Cinémathèque, or at the old Olympia Theater on the Upper West Side. But I can no longer isolate what that something is. I don’t even care to know what was exclusively Eric Rohmer’s and what was mine, what he was ever so cautious to convey and what I most likely misunderstood completely. The mix, as sometimes happens, becomes the work of art.

• Once [Emotions trump rules. This is why, when we speak of moral role models, we think of their hearts, not their brains. Frans de Waal explains Empathy's not a uniquely human trait, explains primatologist Frans de Waal. Apes and other animals feel it as well, suggesting that empathy is truly an essential part of who we are The Evolution of Empathy ; Russians can go nutty when it comes to dogs. In Moscow, stray dogs, like Bessie in Austria, have recovered their genetic wolf roots. They have also learned how to board subways and where to step off. All by themselves... Russians can go nutty when it comes to dogs named Bessie or Bestia ]
• · With morality, we build a castle in the air and then live in it. It has no objective foundation, but it is a real castle You can say the same of money.; Irving Thalberg knew he was fated to an early death. This made him impatient with mediocrity and ambitious for success in his limited time Mortality
• · · Teenage peasant girls in the Middle Ages did have occasional religious visions. Few went on, like Joan of Arc, to lead armies. ...Joan of Arc belongs to that select club of historical figures (Shakespeare, Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill) who are so endlessly fascinating that new biographies appear on a virtually annual basis. And this is to say nothing of endless literary and artistic portrayals—in Joan’s case, by everyone from Shakespeare to Shaw to The Simpsons. ; Was Joseph a drag queen with his “coat of many colors”? Did Ishmael molest Isaac? Maybe not, but the Bible is more risqué than many would prefer “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and He took the bone of Adam’s penis and made him a woman.” ... Er, wait, wasn’t it from one of Adam’s ribs that Eve was created? Not according to Ziony Zevit. A professor of Semitic languages at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles Zevit posits that the Hebrew word tsela (literally “side,” but traditionally translated as “rib”) employed in Genesis refers in fact to Adam’s member. Adam’s Family Jewels
• · · · With wine, “as with women and horses, the real best is second best.” Wine lover Roger Scruton apparently means it, too... Wine Lovers; You know people have tried to put me off as being crazy. Thelonious Monk was only too willing to use the notion to his advantage. "Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy." He ought to have known. Monk was one of only a few jazz musicians to appear on the cover of Time magazine (others include Louis Armstrong, , Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis) and was celebrated as a genius by everyone who mattered Dave Brubeck
• · · · · I’m a misfit,” David Gelernter says. Yes, and a fiercely independent one, like his hero, the visionary prophet, William Blake Can you know something you don't know you know? I’m a misfit,” ; Slovak born Andy Warhol is everywhere. He’s in Europe. He’s in Asia. He’s quoted in papers every day. He has energy still. He’s just, you know, still alive.. Who Fears a Free Mikhail Khodorkovsky? Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s fate stands as a warning, not only to Russians, but to the West. Why is the Kremlin so afraid to see him set free?...
• · · · · · When Rilke died of leukemia, he did not want to know the name of his disease. For him, all that was worth knowing was in his poems... Leukemia ; Paybacks

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Media Dragons believe there's more to love about tax season than most people realize. To spread the love, H&R Block is offering what may be your smartest Valentine's date ever. Make a date with H&R Block this Valentine's and pay only $14 for any H&R Block At Home online product if you register Feb. 12-14. You will receive the full menu of advanced features that H&R Block At Home Basic, Deluxe and Premium offer
It's not often that we see an editorial article that prompts us to get the scissors out of the drawer to cut it out of the Extra.
My partner and I recently spend a week in Hawaii. It intrigues me that we left on Friday night, and arrived on Friday morning.
I rang home to see if we’d already left but had to leave a message on the answering machine. Travel expands the mind. We met new people, experienced fantastic scenery and attractions, and created havoc on the Honolulu Freeway.
I also learnt about humuhumunukunukuapua’a. Airline flights are another matter.
Flying cattle class means Jenny Craig meals, Corolla legroom, abysmal movies, and airline bobsession with Fosters. And other people’s kids. For eight and one half hours, we were in a flying crèche.
Crying, tantrums, seat kicking, playing in the aisles and oblivious parents. “It’s OK dear, we’ll be there soon”. No we won’t. We’ve only just flown over Auckland, you dill. Parents need to control their children or be seated in a special area. Some consideration please. - GK Flying solo - Always being positive can become a negative

To run with extra’s theme, is anyone else fed up with the constant publication of letters expressing frustration at trivial annoyances in people’s day today lives? Personally I had to stand quite close to someone on the train this morning and got wet in the rain. Anyone care? Thought not. –CY Don’t sweat the small stuff


How I make the rich even richer: catching the mood of my generation From parliamentary failure to beaurocratic (sic)absurdity: Who are the liars in your life?
Tax Prof Daniel N. Shaviro (NYU) has a forthcoming novel, Getting It (iUniverse, 2010)

Bill Doberman is a liar. He's also a conniver, a phony, a hypocrite, and a cad -- and those are his good points. But will it all be enough to save him on the Night of the Long Knives -- when his law firm, Ashby & Cinders, picks, at most, one new partner -- coming up in just six weeks?
His fellow associates hate him. The partner he's working for wants to destroy him. And does Mr. Cinders, sitting at the top of the food chain, even know who he is?
Not to mention what Lyla will do if she catches him being unfaithful again ...
"Evelyn Waugh meets John Grisham. Hilarious and gripping." Tax Prof Joseph Bankman (Stanford)

• Liars ; [I tend to bounce in and out of communism and capitalism and I have found something nice to say about nearly every ism I have experienced. Except Political freedom ; The irony of dictatorships is that when democracy emerges from their ashes, it is sometimes the ex-dictator's top generals who, metaphorically speaking, pound the nails in the coffin of the dictator and make it possible for civilians to keep the military away from the helm of power. This was the case with the successful democratic transitions of Spain, Portugal and Greece many decades ago, and with those of Chile and Argentina more recently, as Independent Institute Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa explains in his latest column. The irony of dictatorships ]
• · Tax, Wheatley and a tale of two Wickenbys ; That encounter moved Mr Egan to … claim he had been "intimidated and terrified" by "the big, burly Usher of the Black Rod", who had approached the Treasurer " in a threatening way with his rod over his shoulder
• · · Jonah Lehrer wrote in December about how psychologists are learning more about how the creative brain functions, using the example of a simple but powerful experiment among college students. One group was given the smallest permission to think fearlessly, and they jumped at it ; Past;
• · · · The former staff member, who was not named, made a protected disclosure to the clerk of the Legislative Assembly, Russell Grove, in January claiming Ms Paluzzano falsified the pay records of her parliamentary staff In an email to Mr Grove, the former staff member said he was accused of threatening Ms Paluzzano. I argue that I was simply trying to fulfil my responsibility to the NSW Parliament of reporting conduct that I find questionable ; The revelation that former public servant Terry Charles Spence had turned whistleblower came as a surprise to everyone Parliamentary embezzler blows whistle on MPs ; Mark D'Arney
• · · · · A lot of hype and hyped-up criticism have accompanied the launch of the iPad. The critics have missed the point. The iPad is not a netbook or scaled-down laptop. It is not a workhorse loaded up with functions and hardware. It is a platform for story-telling, interactive, personal and immediate Insanely, Fantastically, Brilliantly Amazing ; Reminding the world to get a little Insane

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Media Dragon is drowning in tablet rumors which keeps thinking differently
Some fads in the world are not just drawing attention but also make one wonder as to how there are blind followers to every trend. Apple and other Fads


The sad truth is, we have the tax system we deserve. We have not paid enough attention to what is being done in our names in Washington, so we are where we are. We won’t get a simple, fair, and efficient tax system until we demand it. So far, we have not -- but hope springs eternal. Lack of transparency is a moral hazard


Inch Past the High-Water Mark Advisors to the Affluent
They are bankers, but you won’t find one at your local branch of the NatWest.

They earn multimillion-pound salaries, either at a flat rate, on commission, or by owning their own companies and equity funds, investing more than £300 billion on behalf of their clients every year. Often public-school and Oxbridge educated, they are influential and charismatic, yet their names and faces are largely unknown to the public. Until now, that is: for the first time, Spear’s Wealth Management Survey has listed the Top 50 wealth managers in Britain in a Power Index.
Their job is to look after the megabillion pound assets of the super-rich — wealth that only 25 years ago would have been secreted away in offshore accounts. The 1980s Big

• Super rich [The lesson is that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is - An American citizen suspected of being behind a massive tax fraud scheme was extradited from Israel to the US massive fraud case ; “Another crazy idea popped into Bill Comiskey’s head: What if the tax department required banks to turn over their customers’ mortgage applications? “ Ideas ]
• · Estate agents, journalists, bankers and politicians are generally deemed the professionals least esteemed by the general public. But as the acrimony over how to repair the public finances intensifies, some parts of the tax profession are gaining pariah status as well. Working in tax: system struggles with complexity ; Two things are certain about moving money overseas: First, it’s necessary if you want to shield at least some of your savings from the capital controls, wealth taxes and confiscations that will (not might) be imposed by over-indebted governments in coming years. Second, there’s a whole ecosystem of predators waiting to exploit the first-time offshore investor’s inexperience. So knowing the risks and how to avoid them is crucial
• · · President spokesman denies any grounds for suspicion in motives behind decisions. Pitr has been a fugitive from Czech justice since 2007, after being convicted of tax fraud Klaus pardoned criminals linked to gang ; The conversation can last less than 30 seconds. But it's an exchange that has resulted in criminal fraud subpoenas, felony charges and jail time for business owners across New York state. And it usually goes something like this: Unfortunately for the store owner, the customer is really an undercover investigator with the state Department of Taxation and Finance. New York prowling for tax cheats
• · · · For me it began in the early 80's when I worked at the Parliamentary Library Your first Apple, or how it all began... ; Above Law ;
• · · · · Apple tablet: Next big thing is here - Apple fans eager to swallow the tablet. If you're reading this Wednesday and you haven't heard of the tablet, I'll wager you a MacBook Pro that by Thursday you'll have heard more than you can read … The veil was finally lifted on one of the most hotly anticipated gadgets in technology history tonight as Apple's Steve Jobs held aloft the iPad, Apple iPad: the wait is over – but is it future of media or oversized phone? ; iThing: The Best Tablet Spoof Yet - Apple launches the iPad, its 9.7" colour screen tablet, which aims to rob Kindle of growing ebook market and be hottest gadget in technology history iPad on Google